


Til the Shadows Let Me Go

by audreycritter



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Gen, Hugs, clark just wants to help his friend, he's borken he lost his kid, i'm obsessed with making bruce interact with the kent family, jason todd deserved better, martha kent is a good mom, this is sad and then slightly less sad but not much, tw: grief, tw: mention of canonical child loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Bruce Wayne visits the Kent Farm for the first time since he lost Jason.





	Til the Shadows Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mountain Goats' song _Proverbs 6:27_.

**One Hour**

“They still out there?”

Jonathan shaded his eyes against the glinting sun through the big front plate-glass window. The wind whipped swirls of dusty snow, sharp like splinters, across the icy prairie.

“Mhmm,” he called back, to Martha in the kitchen.

“It’s been an hour,” she said, a hint of worry in her tone. “They’re gonna freeze to death.”

“Clark won’t,” Jonathan said, squinting.

“What are they doing?” Martha asked, biting her lower lip. She twisted a kitchen towel in her hands, then snapped it out and folded it into a neat rectangle.

“Just standin’,” Jonathan said. “How long you figure I should spy on them?”

“I’m going to start some soup,” Martha said. “I shoulda started it half an hour ago.”

“He’s not coming in,” Jonathan warned.

“He will,” Martha said firmly.

Forty five minutes later, Clark stepped into the house all but dragging Bruce Wayne behind him. The edges of Bruce’s overcoat and scarf were stiff with ice, his cheeks burnt red from the wind. He wouldn’t look Martha in the face, and a scowl was etched deep into the corners of his mouth.

“I’m going to go find something dry,” Clark said, mouthing something at Martha from behind Bruce’s head. She didn’t catch whatever it was he was saying but hurried forward to take Bruce’s coat. He hesitated to take it off.

“I’m not staying long,” he said, swallowing. He looked up at the wall, over her head, and she bit back a gasp at the vacant exhaustion in his eyes. He looked ten years older than the last time she’d seen him, and like he hadn’t slept in twice that long.

“It’s plenty warm,” she said. “We’ll get you a blanket if you’re chilled. Just let me at least dry and warm these up for you.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

Martha wasn’t a cruel person by nature, so it hurt her to use coercion, but even if she hadn’t known exactly what Clark was mouthing to her it was clear he was desperate. Desperate enough to fly the both of them from a city to a front porch in Kansas in nothing but day clothes, and then follow his best friend off the porch into the deep snow and argue with him for nearly two hours. She wasn’t going to let that progress be all for nothing.

“Honey, you’re gonna drip all over my rugs.”

Bruce looked down at his feet and said, very faintly, “Oh.”

Then the gloves came off, and the coat, and the hat and scarf and dress boots. His hands were scarred and bruised, some of the splits fresh and swollen.

 _He broke his hand on me, Ma. I barely even saw it coming,_  Clark had told her, his head in his own hands while he sat at the kitchen table, one in the morning, six months before. She’d heard a noise above Jonathan’s snoring and found him there, crying into a cooling mug of cocoa.

“I can hang them up,” Bruce said, voice flat and quiet.

“Nonsense,” Martha said, with a reassuring smile. She took the whole pile before he could protest and bustled off to hang them in the laundry room where the dryer was running warm. The drip mat for Jonathan’s work jacket and work boots was there, beneath a small wooden rack of hangers.

“There’s soup,” she called into the rest of the house. “Chicken noodle.”

“Sounds great, Ma!” Clark said, a bit forced and strained. There was a low murmur of one-sided discussion.

Bruce sat at the table with them and made no effort to engage in conversation that they tried to keep going around him. It was a change from comfort he’d grown into there, a regression to the reservation of the first visit or two.

Except this was a harder silence, a higher wall.

 _What am I supposed to say to him, Ma? What do you say when someone loses a kid?_  Clark had begged her, sitting at the same table with red-rimmed eyes.

 _I don’t know, honey. Just keep being there,_  she’d told him, because she had been to two funerals for children in her lifetime and she still didn’t know.

She didn’t think she ever would.

Clark seemed to think she should know, that she or Jonathan would have some key to reaching his friend when his every attempt had failed in some way or another while he’d slowly been shut out from Bruce’s life.

Or, while Bruce shut himself out from the world and everything in it, maybe.

What did anyone say to a man trying to bury himself with his son?

“Please pass the bread,” Martha said, gesturing.

Bruce passed the bread and then left the table.

It was Jonathan who caught Clark by the arm, while watching Martha’s face. She shook her head, too. Clark made an exasperated expression and held an arm up in a  _what!_  of protest, but they were silent statues around the kitchen table listening to the tread of Bruce’s steps go, not out the door, but up the stairs.

Clark relaxed and slumped into the chair and put his head in his hands again.

“Elbows off the table, Clark Joe,” Martha said, and he sighed and reheated his soup with his eyes.

* * *

**Five Hours**

“You coulda given us at least a phone call,” Martha scolded. “I didn’t even have time to make a pie.”

“I don’t think he needs baked goods right now, Ma. We tried that already,” Clark said, lying on his stomach on the couch. Or, lying if hovering counted— he was floating just an inch above the cushions. She wondered if her couch was that lumpy or if he did it without thinking.

“I think he needs normal,” Martha said, rearranging Jonathan’s button up on the ironing board. “Hand me that starch spray, would you.”

It teetered on the edge of the ironing board a blink later. She scoffed.

“Show off,” she said, disapprovingly. “Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m glad you convinced him to come visit again.”

“It wasn’t exactly planned,” Clark said, his face in a pillow. “He hates me now, by the way, so there’s that.”

“I doubt he’ll hold on to that for long,” Martha chided. “So, why the big hurry?”

“Alfred called me,” Clark said into the pillow.

“What’s that? Don’t mumble, Clark.”

He lifted his face, rolled easily in the air and settled to sit on the couch. He kept his voice low, leaning forward to talk.

“Alfred called me. Dick and Bruce got into a big fight a few months ago, I didn’t even know about it. They apparently haven’t been speaking. Then a new kid showed up.”

Martha’s eyebrows shot toward her browline. She didn’t know which piece of information she was reacting to more.

“He’d tracked down Dick. Told them he knew everything, all about who they were. When Dick wouldn’t go help Bruce, this kid, Tim, convinced Alfred to give him a costume and let him try. Saved his life.”

“And now…” Martha trailed off.

Clark sat back with a huff. “The kid’s been spending most of his time with Alfred. ‘Pre-training,’ Bruce called it. I think he’s really waiting for him to get bored and give up. Alfred said he’s been more reckless, having more nightmares, sleeping less. But he’s been talking to Alfred again, to Tim some, even. So I don’t know.”

He glanced up toward the ceiling, as if he could will the man upstairs to keep sleeping. Bruce had gone straight from the dinner table to the guest room and fallen asleep buried under the pile of quilts there.

“What was Mr. Pennyworth’s concern?”

“Alfred wouldn’t have even told me half of that unless he was worried out of his mind. I think he’s afraid Bruce is having some sort of…manic episode, like a precursor to…well, more self-endangerment. Or something. I don’t know. Bruce walked in on us talking, home early from work, and I gave him this bullshit—”

“Clark  _Joe_.”

Clark rolled his eyes and she sent a spray of iron steam in his direction. “—bullroar excuse that I stopped by to invite him to visit here, and when he said he’d come sometime soon, I just…took him. I didn’t want him to change his mind. He figured out pretty quick I’d been lying. Thus, us standing knee deep in snow for two hours talking to a damn statue while he got frostbite.”

“Well,” Martha said. “Well.”

“Yeah,” Clark said. He flopped on the couch and stared at the plaster ceiling. “Sorry.”

“I’m gonna go make a pie,” Martha said, unplugging the iron. “Hang those up for your pa, would you.”

“Why doesn’t Pa have to hang up his own shirts?” Clark grumbled, climbing to his feet. He stretched.

“Scoot,” she said. “No whining.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, kissing the top of her head while he went by with an arm full of ironed shirts.

“Take another blanket in,” Martha whispered harshly after him up the stairs. “You know he gets cold.”

* * *

**Eighteen Hours**

Breakfast was a quiet affair after Clark slipped into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, and announced that Bruce was still sleeping. He hadn’t, as Martha mostly expected, vanished into the night.

One of those visits, then.

After breakfast, she swatted Jonathan’s hand away from the chocolate banana pie sitting in the fridge, barking a laugh outright at his grumbled insinuation that she never made nice things for just him.

“She makes you those raisin cookies,” Clark had insisted, in her defense.

“She makes those for  _you_ ,” Jonathan complained gruffly, pulling his wool cap down far over his ears. He had a seed order in to pick up in town, and the cold snap they were in was just a final spit of bitter winter before it gave way to spring.

“I don’t even  _like_  raisins,” Clark protested. “Nobody else likes raisins.”

“See, Jon? You aren’t so neglected as all that.” Martha hummed.

Clark flashed her a grin, impish and sheepish. It was a thin veneer over the deep concern that had settled in him the past few months, always hanging over him these days. She was glad to see it, all the same, even if it stirred some suspicion in her.

“I’m going with Pa,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Be back in a bit. Holler if you need me.”

She watched them both go, Jonathan reaching up to scrub his knuckles into Clark’s perfect, impervious hair. Probably nagging him about not wearing a hat— Jonathan had always had a harder time letting go of those things Clark didn’t really need. Martha was content to let him run, watching the other boys at school wearing their gym shorts in freezing rain and jamming their hands into thin jackets with fancy logos while waiting for the bus. Jonathan was the one always after Clark to  _put on some pants, get a real coat, don’t forget a hat, lace up those boots son._

Martha opened the fridge to put the butter away and there was the imprint of Clark’s finger in the edge of the pie. He’d sneaked a lick while defending her to Jonathan, and she muttered good naturedly while pushing the door shut until the seal engaged.

She was cutting quilt squares, the project spread out across the rarely-used dining room table, when the cushioned silence of the little farmhouse surrounded by snow was broken by a scream.

It was a keening howl, high-pitched and animal, and abruptly silenced.

She went on cutting dark plum scraps into neat triangles.

Half an hour later, she’d moved on to the faded lavender scraps with the tiny white flowers. She was measuring a triangle when Bruce came down the stairs and stood in the dining room doorway, a shadow filling the space.

“Clark and his pa went into town,” Martha said, marking the back of the fabric with a pencil. She watched out of the corner of her eye while Bruce’s fists relaxed, just enough to hang more loosely. The white faded from his knuckles.

“I’m…” he started, his voice hoarse and dry.

She set the pencil down then, and pushed her glasses up on her nose and turned to look at him. He’d washed his face, or splashed water there— the edges of his hairline were still damp. He’d found a pair of Clark’s sweats and an old Smallville Cyclones t-shirt.

She didn’t know if he’d been about to apologize or ask for something, but the clothes made it look like he was planning to stay a bit— she’d been listening for him dropping off the roof to leave as unobtrusively as he could. Martha wasn’t sure she would have even been able to hear the soft fall into the snow.

“I made a chocolate banana pie,” she said. “Did you sleep okay?”

There was some sort of battle going on inside him; his face was pale but bright spots of red were rising on his cheeks, and the circles under his eyes were as gray and puffy as they’d been the day before. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing while he stared at the quilting supplies on the table, and his jaw worked like he was trying to say something.

“Bruce?” she said, gently.

He put a hand over his eyes and half-turned from the room, a strangled cough catching in his throat.

Martha stepped forward without thinking and opened her arms. Perhaps, if she’d thought about it, she would have expected him to stiffen or pull back, but because she acted on instinct it seemed only natural that he bent into the hug like he couldn’t hold himself up.

He couldn’t have been leaning that much weight, but it was a limp and desperate hug all the same. The crack of a sob was right in her ear, his head pressed against her shoulder. She squeezed him gently and began rubbing circles on his back.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh,” Martha said, softly, against his hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“He was my boy,” he groaned, a shudder going through him. “He was…he…he was  _my_  little boy.”

Martha’s heart hurt, a severing fissure tearing through her at the thought, the thing that had driven her to tears more than once for her, for Clark, for him, for Jason Todd himself. The idea of losing Clark seemed so impossible but so very frightening that she was repulsed by it; he hadn’t come from her womb and he was hers all the same. The ache of fear at being separated from him  _like that_  was no less for being wrought by choice instead of blood.

“I know, honey,” she said, kissing the side of his temple. There still weren’t  _real_  words for this. “I’m so sorry.”

Somehow, this man had also become family to her, in a way, because he was the closest thing Clark would ever have to a brother— Clark had told her as much, more than once.

They stood there for long enough that Martha lost sense of time— it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes— while Bruce shook with ugly sobs.

Bruce sniffed hard and pulled back suddenly, rubbing his eyes and looking at the hall runner beneath his bare feet. Martha gave him a moment while she grabbed a tissue.

“I’m…”

“If you say sorry, I’m going to make you run laps ‘round the house like I used to make Clark,” she warned, patting his arm as she went by. “Now, you’ve got to be starving. Let’s see what we can find.”

“I’m not really hungry,” he said quietly, following her anyway. He rubbed his elbow, looking awkward in the small kitchen.

“We’ll just have to start with pie, then,” she said. “Take a seat.”

Bruce sat.

Martha kept sliding new slices in front of him and he kept tucking them away while she chattered, and he gradually warmed up to answering a few questions by the time half the pie was gone.

“I should have come sooner,” he said, studying the fork crossed over the empty plate. “I couldn’t…I was…”

“We’ve got plenty of big fields to stomp around and scream in. A guest room always open for you to sleep,” Martha said, putting the pie back in the fridge. “You come whenever you need a break from whatever it is you’ve got going on in that city. Don’t come out here to put on an act for us.”

Bruce nodded at the table. He took a deep, shaky breath.

“You can talk or not talk,” Martha said, sitting across from him. “We aren’t the kind that go looking to be offended by things. But you know we care about you, Bruce. You need people right now, as much as you want to push them away. He wouldn’t want that.”

“He was such a good kid. The best,” Bruce said, into his hands. “It’s fucking killing me. Sorry. I don’t know how to do this.”

“I don’t, either,” Martha said. “I don’t think anybody figures that out alone, though.”

Bruce sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t deserve you, or Clark. I’ve been an asshole to your son, Martha.”

“Oh, he’ll live,” Martha said with a shrug. It got a scratchy huff out of Bruce, almost like a laugh.

Outside, truck doors slammed shut, and Bruce rubbed at his face again.

“You look fine,” Martha said, patting his shoulder when she stood. “I’ve caught Clark crying more times than I can count. You stay as long as you like, you hear me?”

Bruce nodded, and when Clark came into the kitchen with his arms full of paper grocery bags there was some sort of exchange between them, unspoken, and Clark said, “I’ll put my boots back on. We’re going for a walk, Ma.”

“Dress warm,” she said, peering into the first paper sack on the counter. “Come back in time for dinner.”

* * *

**Twenty Seven Hours**

The soft glow of the TV screen lit up the room with the muted colors of a British ballroom. Jonathan was pretending to be immersed in a Field and Stream magazine after they’d outvoted him and started a BBC adaptation.

“Culture,” Clark had insisted.

“If I say girly, you’ll throw a book at me,” Jonathan had said.

He was watching surreptitiously anyway, which completely fell apart when he grumbled, “He’s a snake, Edith, you fool girl.”

Clark was stretched out on the floor, Martha was working on knitting a hat. Bruce was wrapped in a thick pile of blankets on one end of the couch. Every so often, his phone would light up and he’d pick it up for a moment— Clark kept glancing at him until Bruce finally said, albeit stiffly, “Tim has criminology homework questions.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Clark said.

“Clark, it’s a credit to your mother that you can’t lie. Don’t try,” Bruce shot back, and Clark threw a piece of popcorn at him.

Martha turned in early, citing tiredness, and Jonathan ended up trudging up the stairs ahead of her when she found things to finish in the kitchen. She thought Bruce and Clark were finishing the movie until she turned to go up, and Bruce was right there, in the dim hall. She startled and the apology was out of his mouth, soft and fast like an equally startled rabbit.

“I,” he said, pausing after. “I’m…I don’t know how to do this. But I’m trying. Clark said he doesn’t know what to say to me, most days, but I know he’s…also trying. So, thank you. For not…for…”

“I know you’re trying,” Martha said, putting a hand on his cheek. “That’s what we do when we don’t know what else to do.”

Bruce nodded, his eyes closed, and then he was gone— back into the room with Clark. She could see him burrowing himself beneath blankets on the couch, stretched out this time.

Some things wouldn’t ever have the right words, but words weren’t all they had.


End file.
